Initial draft of New Tech Support Document

[Madmatt]

Hi, I have been working on combining the most frequent tech support issues into a new online document to be posted soon but thought you guys might want to have a look at it. You should probably use this as a reference for people that post of such issues.

Troubleshooting Guide: Combat Mission v1.12

Install Issues:

Problem: Setup halts part way through the install process. Indicates a problem reading a specific file or resource.

Cause/Solution: Could be a dirty or scratched CD. Advise to do the following:

Use some rubbing alcohol and dilute it with water (about a capful total) Dip a cotton swab into the solution and then gently rub the soaked swab across the shiny surface of the CD. Be sure to work any area that show smudges or scratches. Let the CD air dry. Re-insert the CD and try to re-install. You can also use any aftermarket CD Cleaning kit or Cleaning System to do the above.

If that fails see below for Manual Game Installation Procedure.

Problem: During installation on a Windows system setup prompts, "Please insert disk 0 that contains the file data 3.cab.” or any other disk and data.cab file.

Cause/Solution: This occurs when a previous program leaves its setup files in the Windows Temp folder. Have the customer browse to their Windows Temp folder (default location c:\Windows\Temp) and delete all files and folders located there. Now rerun setup.

If that fails see below for Manual Game Installation Procedure.

Manual Game Installation Procedure (Windows):

Create a directory somewhere on your computer called "CMBO" (Recommend C:\Program Files\CMBO). Now open Windows Explorer and browse to the Combat Mission CD. Copy the Wav, BMP and Scenarios folders into your new CMBO folder. Be sure that you copy the folder AND files inside of them! Now copy the Combat Mission.exe file from the CD to your new CMBO folder.

Now launch the game from your harddrive. You will still need to have the CD in

the CD drive to play the game (this is done for copy protection reasons) but all the

files will be on your computer and it should be okay.

General Issues:

Problem: Saved games do not show up in the Scenario/Operation list at the Main Menu.

Cause/Solution: Game is being run from the CD instead of from the installed location on the computer.

Make sure you are running the game from the hard drive and not off the CD.

While the CD being inserted is required to run the game you need to be sure

that the game itself (the Combat Mission.exe) is being run from the

installed directory location on your computer. If you run the game from the

CD it will only show files on the CD and not the new ones being saved.

Problem: Game reports that CD needs to be inserted in order to load the game.

Cause/Solution: The CD DOES have to be inserted into the CD Drive in order to launch the game. Once the game has loaded the CD can be removed.

Problem: Game locks up or displays a black screen immediately after game is loaded.

Cause/Solution: Usually caused by a QuickTime conflict as the game tries to play the intro movie. In order to disable the intro movie playback you will need to hold down the SPACEBAR when the game is loading. That will toggle the movie playback on/off.

Video Issues (Mac):

Problem: On a G3, G4 or iMac the display of text in the game is blank or is all whited-out.

Cause/Solution: This is due to a known bug in the video extensions for the ATI video card on those computers. There are two solutions available.

#1 This problem was resolved with the release of MacOS 9.1. By upgrading to MacOS 9.1 (available for free from www.apple.com) the problem should be resolved.

#2 We have included a standalone Universal Installer with the Mac Combat Mission v1.12 patch which will also fix this issue. You can download that file from:

Mac Combat Mission v1.12 Patch

Once that file is downloaded, just double-click on the "OpenGL 1.2.1" icon. It then mounts a "virtual disk" on the desktop which contains an installer.

Problem: Mac system has a Geforce 2/3 video card and the sky graphic textures in-game are all black.

Causes/Solution: Appears to be a conflict at some level with the Nvidia video extensions. There is no fix at this time however we are currently looking into a possible workaround

Video Issues (Windows)

Problem: When game is launched an Unhandled Exception: c0000005 at address: 0053d978 & 005419e5 (can also be some other addresses but they always start with c0000005) error occurs.

Cause/Solution: At some point a DirectX component file has become corrupted or is no longer correctly functioning. In order to resolve this issue you should re-install DirectX. Recommend the latest version, which is now DirectX 8.0a and can be obtained directly from Microsoft at the following url: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/homeuser/downloads/default.asp

Problem: Video card is a Voodoo 5000/5500 and all in-game text is blank or white and unreadable.

Cause/Solution: Issue is caused by a fault in the Voodoo Drivers. In order to fix this issue you will need to go into your Voodoo Control Panel and change the level of Direct 3D Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) to any setting other than the default, which is normally set to Best Performance. That will clear up the text.

Problem: Video Card is a Voodoo based chipset (4000/5000/5500 but could be others) and when game is minimized and restored with the ESCape key the display is corrupted.

Cause/Solution: Caused by faulty Voodoo drivers. One solution is to select Single Chip Rendering Option from the Voodoo Control Panel. This will fix the corruption but game performance may suffer slightly. A workaround is to save the game while the graphics are corrupted, exit the game and then re-load. The corruption will be cleared.

Problem: Video Card is a Nvidia based one (Geforce, Geforce II etc..) and in-game text is blurry or flickering.

Cause/Solution: This issue appears in various Nvidia reference drivers including the newest 12.xx based Detonator 3 drivers. Older 6.50 based drivers seem to work better. Changing the level of Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (sometimes turning it off all together) will also resolve this issue.

UPDATE: For Windows 2000 systems the new beta 14.40 drivers seem to fix all corruption. For ME/XP/95/98 sopme corruption with this latest release is still evident.

To find a list of downloadable video drivers please visit: http://www.guru3d.com/ as they have the most comprehensive list I have seen to date.

Madmatt

p.s. If anyone has any addition please reply below. I didnt cover to many audio issues for example as they seem pretty rare.

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[Fieldmarshall]

Matt: there wouldnt be as many folks here if they read the bloody manual, yeah SOME have problems that arent in the manual but they are heretics and you know it...burn them at the stake! (Also isnt that stuff you posted in the "Readme" file when you get 1.12 patch?)

-Field

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Fieldmarshall ]

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Fieldmarshall ]

[Madmatt]

Feild,

Some of it is in the readme but much of it is new I think and since I wrote the old readme I will take my word for it.

Madmatt

[Schrullenhaft]

Looks pretty good Madmatt.

You may want to dig up the Kyro II posts for some of the text issues (and the temporary workarounds that sorta work).

Other video card issues could be listed, but it might be overkill: Matrox G-series & Millenium-series, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo 1/2, S3 Virge-series. It may take too much effort (compared to the number of current postings about such problems) to find out which specific features such as lack of transparencies, resolution limitations, etc. that each of these cards may lack. Some of the threads in the past concerning these issues may not reflect the current state of the drivers (I thought some Matrox G-series issues were cleared up with a new set of drivers in the past, but I'm not sure).

You may also want to list something about desktop resolutions and CM's resolution. There were some game-oriented resolution switchers listed here in the past (QRes was one, I'm sure there are others), so you may want to mention those.

Well, I guess this could be endless to some extent. Let me know if you if you'd like any further help on this. I can dig up and edit some of my long-winded posts in the past for some issues.

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]